Tara E. Pedersen received her Ph.D. from The University of California at Davis in 2009. She has taught survey course, as well as courses in Shakespeare, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, The Bible as Literature, special topics in literature, and composition. Her research focuses on knowledge production in early modern England, and she is currently working on a project that explores the significance of the figure of the mermaid in early modern English theater and culture.

Teaching Interests

My teaching interests encompass Renaissance/Early Modern Studies, Epistemology Studies, Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Embodiment, and the Post-human.

Research Interests

I specialize in early modern drama and poetry; my research focuses on how literature participates in constructing categories of knowledge, with a special emphasis on the categories related to understandings of sexuality, gender, and the boundaries of the human in early modern theatrical culture. I am currently working on a book project that investigates representations of the mermaid on the early modern stage. I am also working on a second project, which examines the boundaries between the living and the dead in early modern culture. In this way I hope to bring questions of epistemology into conversation with questions of ontology.

Consulting Interests

2010: “We shall discover our Selves: Practicing the Mermaid’s Law in Margaret Cavendish’s _The Convent of Pleasure_” , Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Spring 2013

ENGL 494 INTERNSHIP IN WRITING/EDITING

ENGL 167 INTRO TO LITERATURE

ENGL 320 SHAKESPEARE

ENGL 417 STUDIES IN BRITISH LITERATURE:

Fall 2012

ENGL 216 BRITISH LITERATURE TO 1800

ENGL 101 COMPOSITION AND READING

ENGL 499 INDEPENDENT STUDY

ENGL 320 SHAKESPEARE

Spring 2012

ENGL 420 ADVANCED SHAKESPEARE

ENGL 217 BRITISH LITERATURE, 1800-1920

ENGL 499 INDEPENDENT STUDY

ENGL 494 INTERNSHIP IN WRITING/EDITING

ENGL 497 SENIOR THESIS

ENGL 320 SHAKESPEARE

Fall 2011

ENGL 311 BRITISH DRAMA

ENGL 101 COMPOSITION AND READING

ENGL 499 INDEPENDENT STUDY

ENGL 494 INTERNSHIP IN WRITING/EDITING

ENGL 497 SENIOR THESIS

ENGL 320 SHAKESPEARE